From commercial airline fleet renewal through fighter procurement challenges to industry consolidation in the face of budget pressures, 2014 looks certain to be a pivotal year for aerospace and defense. Here are 12 areas to keep an eye on. 787

Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy spent a frustrating eight hours outside the International Space Station during a record-setting Russian spacewalk on Friday, installing then retrieving a pair of commercial Earth observing cameras that failed to provide satisfactory telemetry.The cameras, delivered aboard the Progress 53 resupply craft on Nov. 29, were developed for UrtheCast, of Vancouver, Canada which plans to offer near real time Earth views to subscribers through the Internet in partnership with Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency.

NASA's Mission Control has re-integrated a series of crucial internal heat exchangers with the external thermal control system of the six person International Space Station, following a pair of recent U.S. spacewalks to deal with the Dec. 11 failure of a flow control valve in one of two external ammonia cooling loops.

Landing accomplished, China plans Moon rocks sample return

A&D companies and investors need to understand each other better

Commercial Spaceflight Soars In 2013

After more than a decade of design work and pathfinder fabrication, the lightweight five-layer sunshield that will keep the sensitive infrared detectors on the James Webb Space Telescope at 40K is in deployment testing at prime contractor Northrop Grumman.

Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson defines close-mouthed, but as his secretive startup begins to notch some success in its plan to develop reusable space launchers, he is opening up a bit. He was unusually chatty during a press teleconference on the results of a full mission-cycle test of the clean-sheet BE-3 rocket engine Blue is developing to power its reusable suborbital New Shepard crew vehicle.